SimpsonScarborough: Intelligent Marketing for Higher Education

If only I had a dollar for every college and university administrator or board member who suggested the use of TV advertising to fix a variety of issues at their institution. The tactic is age-old but misses two important points: viewing habits of prospective students have changed dramatically and, correspondingly, the cost of TV ads has skyrocketed.

So, how good of an investment are TV ads and what makes the most effective use of the medium?

My listserv subscription to Ad Age MediaWorks alerted me to a first time study by Neilsen Media Research on the television viewing preferences and habits of college students. Although college-age viewing patterns have been tracked previously, this was the first study of the age demographics’ TV preferences in settings outside of their parents’ home – and the results are intriguing. Neilsen confirmed that college students watch “a lot” of television after 11 p.m., averaging 30 hours of television viewed per week.

Coincidentally, Elizabeth Scarborough, our firm’s president, compiled a comprehensive online listing of TV ads colleges and universities have employed.

The timing of the two made me reflect on a conversation I had recently with a college administrator who suggested their institution might want to advertise during “Jerry Springer,” because they were losing students to those schools who advertise on daytime television.

Rather than suggest jumping feet first into television advertising, think strategically. If college students are watching an average of 30 hours of television per week and a significant portion of those hours are not daytime television, then what impact will your daytime media buy bring? How do you ensure your media buy is effective? Is it “Jerry Springer” or MTV? And truthfully, do you want your institution associated with that kind of programming?

Ask yourself this set of questions: how could your marketing dollars get more bang for your buck? Should you, for example, consider online advertising, such as Google ads, or beefing up your website – which is your single greatest and most important marketing tool? Where do you have communications holes that those dollars could patch? What external audiences are not being addressed by your current efforts and how could those resources help to reach them?

Finally, how do you ensure your TV ad is as effective as possible? We think all communications to prospective students should have intertwined goals of raising awareness while driving potential students to your website. Check out the lengthy list of TV commercials that have been employed in the recent past and good luck on your quest.

-- Teresa Valerio Parrot

Posted by Teresa Valerio Parrot at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Odd though it is in a space dedicated normally to the vagaries of marketing in higher education, I want to join the gaggle of pundits in penning a piece on the death of Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner whose passing last week garnered more ink than Hillary’s first post-presidential-campaign-announcement trip to Iowa.

What does the horse that riveted the attention of many as it battled back, temporarily, from a debilitating injury in the Preakness have to do with higher education? The answer is rooted in the litany of beautifully written columns and Op Eds that dotted our nation’s newspapers and websites after the horse was euthanized mercifully by its owners. Most parodied today’s college and pro sports world and concluded that Barbaro was a welcome respite from these athletes, many of whom appear on local police blotters with growing frequency. All of us in higher ed should take notice of the impact our sports programs have on our institutions – and work to make the impressions more positive.

The best of these columns ranged from Sally Jenkins in the Washington Post to Jeff Neuman in the New York Times. Both wrote eloquently that our imaginations were captured by the horse simply because it was a world-class “athlete” without the ubiquitous foibles of today’s college and sports world.

Neuman’s column said, in part, “He never talked about himself in the third person...He didn’t trash talk, taunt or hang on the rim… His only tattoo was discretely hidden…He never dated Paris Hilton…. he never claimed he had been disrespected…. He did not attribute his victories to the glory of his personal Savior... He never claimed he was misquoted in his autobiography… He never fathered multiple off-spring out of wedlock.”

Are there sports marketing lessons our institutions should take from Barbaro’s passing? Should we redouble efforts to teach media training to our football and basketball players and coaches? Should we follow the lead of the NCAA, which is trying increasingly to rein in sports programs that are little more than the minor leagues for the NFL and the NBA? Perhaps some food for thought.

-- Christopher Simpson

Posted by Teresa Valerio Parrot at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The conga line of dying newspapers is now forming.

View this dismal prognosis from two perspectives: The Philadelphia Inquirer, winner of a bushel basket of Pulitzer Prizes since the mid ‘80s and a perennial top 10 national newspaper, and the Newport News (Va.) Daily Press, a regional newspaper indicative of the kind found nationwide in cities and towns.

The Inquirer is in a battle for its collective soul; new owner Brian Tierney, an ad/PR guy from Philly and longtime critic of the newspaper, bought it and is determined to find profitable ground. "We don't need a Jerusalem bureau," he said, ignoring their strong reputation in national and international reporting. "What we need are more people in the South Jersey bureau."

That is his prerogative, of course, but his recipe for success is to slash the editorial staff by as much as 30 percent in addition to a recent round of layoffs.

What happens when the other great metro dailies – The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Miami Herald, The Dallas Morning News, LA Times and The Denver Post – follow suit and pull out of Washington and foreign bureaus? Do we leave it up The Associated Press to paint the world for us in print?

The good news, of course, is more local coverage may well benefit our colleges and universities, which are in a constant fishing expedition to get positive media hits. This brings us to Newport News, Va.

This week that publication announced it would now focus on local news coverage, relegating national and international news to the inside pages, a seismic change from past decades. Ummmmm. Again, a boon for higher ed institutions locally? Perhaps. But what a huge shift for newspapers, from top to bottom, nationwide. As these business scribes seek to find a profitability niche, how much of our media/PR/marketing effort should go to an industry in dire decline?

Okay, okay. Let’s ride that “more local coverage” horse as long as we can, demanding that larger news holes in local newspapers may mean better coverage for our colleges and universities. But don’t ignore the death knell her for great journalism.

When famed New York Times reporter Johnny Apple died earlier this year, more than one newspaper bemoaned the end of “great journalists.” The likes of Johnny Apple will never be found covering local school board meetings, and that is the route of the Inquirer and the Daily Press.

I am biased, as a former reporter in the local and national media. That aside, don’t ignore the profound changes well underway in journalism today. Make it work to your advantage, but note that the industry is changing faster than the stock market. What does this mean for your marketing/media/PR operation?

-- Christopher Simpson

Posted by Teresa Valerio Parrot at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)